Janathon day 4: Wild Training, a brief run - and FitBit!

Written Jan 4, 2014, tagged under post,amersham,fitbit,health,Hervines Park,janathon,running,wild training

Today was my first session this year of Wild Training, a local outdoor fitness group I've been attending for a couple of years now. There's a lovely mix of people at the group, and sessions manage a fine balance between good, strong exercise and fun.

Today's session was the last of a phase called PHA, aka Peripheral Heart Action. Basically, we alternate 5 minute sets of running (to get the blood down to the legs) and upper-body work (to get it back up again). Today we were on parallettes for upper body, working on a range of activities including press-ups, tuck-sits, mountain climbers and so on. Overall - OUCH! Also, it absolutely tipped it while we were out in Hervines Park, which was already pretty water-logged, so by the time we were done, we were all covered in mud. Oddly, though, everyone really enjoyed it! And the new trainer did a great job too - well done, Charlie!

After the session, given that I was in my running stuff and couldn't really get much muddier, I figured I'd take the chance to run home. It isn't all that far, but every little helps! So in the end today I managed an hour of class-based exercise and a run home, running 2.3 miles in 21:51, apparently. I've been in agony most of the time since getting back, of course; yesterday's PT session has really caught up with me, and I have pretty severe DOMS in my glutes - such sweet pain!

Finally - the FitBit! Before Christmas, I noticed they were going for a song on the Tesco website under their "Boost" promotion. Although the offer has changed, they're still not a bad option for buying a FitBit One as they are offering 1,000 Clubcard points for doing so. It's a great little device! You clip it to your clothes, and it counts your steps, calories, distance etc. It appears to use air pressure to sense changes in altitude, so counts climbs in the units of "staircases" (about 14 feet, I believe). The unit has a display on it, but it also syncs to recent phones for a live read-out and tracking of the data. Finally, it came with a wrist band to use it for sleep tracking, using movement to detect restlessness.

I compared the distance tracking to my Garmin GPS watch, and it is pretty accurate overall. The floors tracking also seems pretty reasonable. Battery life is fine, and it has been a lot of fun. I've worn it all the time since getting it, and now I'm building up some interesting statistics as to how my days pan out, sleep patterns and so on. The picture shows the summary read-out of the device from my last day on the Isle of Wight, for instance. Overall, a purchase I'm extremely happy with, and would recommend if you like that sort of thing (like I do).

Well, that's me done; over and out until tomorrow!